Teaching+the+Narrative+Essay

Shirleen Augustine

SCKWP 2007 Summer Institute: Teacher Demo

Unit: Teaching the Narrative Essay

Instructional Objective: For students to learn and practice the first step in the writing process—plan. Through planning the student will be able to enhance the ideas and content of the essay.

Specific Learning Outcomes:

Standard 1: Writing: The student writes effectively for a variety of audiences, purposes, and contexts.

Benchmark 1: The student writes narrative text using the writing process.

Ideas and Content (prewriting, drafting, revising) Indicator: Applies appropriate strategies to generate narrative text (e.g. brainstorming, listing, webbing, working in pairs or cooperative groups and identifying information from print sources.)

Specific Learner Outcome: All students will score higher on ideas and content when taking the local or Kansas Writing Assessment.

Content and Activities and Instructional Procedures:

The class will have read a narrative story/book of some kind in the classroom.

Following the example of the teacher the students prepare the graphic organizer. Fold into 6 columns Trace the fold, if necessary. Put headings on each of the columns: Title, Place, Time, Characters, Problem, Solution Review with the students what each of the headings mean

As a group, the class fills in the graphic organizer using the narrative the class has read. This organizer will serve as their model.

For additional practice the students take a story they are familiar with (book, movie, etc.) and complete a second graphic organizer independently. The teacher can check to see if the students understand which information fits under each heading.

Taking a third graphic organizer, the students will begin to plan a story they would like to write. The students do not need to complete them in order from left to right.

From the organizer the students can begin to write their narrative essay. More detailed instruction will be given at this point on the next steps of the writing process—organizing and writing.

Materials:

Sheets of paper Pencils/markers

Sources:

Karen Valdes: Beginning to Write (Teacher to Teacher Workshops) http://www.paec.org/teacher2teacher